Friday, 18 December 2015

The coolness of the metropolitan air felt nothing less painful than shards of cold unglazed glass thrown in the bin after the corporate houses redecorated to celebrate a pay raise or a new account being added to another multitude of yellow files and endless sleepless nights and ever brimming cups of black coffee.

My stripper name is Blaze.

My pimp tells me I am on fire whenever i perform. Such an irony. When I say “perform”.

I waitressed for several months before bumping into Cole on a drunken night off with a handsome young English boy paying for my drinks in hopes of a hand job in the crammed loo that reeked of the stale smell of used condoms and hurried sex, mixed with adrenaline infused sweat and the battle of tongues.

Cole introduced me to a tiny apartment that had been lived in by Meg, Bunny, Lou, Angel and many others before me but they were nothing like me. I was different. Cole told me that everyday.

I lost myself in the forbidden desire to try the unknown, the frightening yet the inevitable now that Bunny , Lou ,Meg and Angel had left behind an inheritance of skimpy lingerie and a legacy of witchcraft in handcuffs, leashes and whips.

My coming out was a royal event.

Purple.

The gentle chiffon with laced balconette cups that spilled out secrets to the viewers, the corset tightening at the dawn of my waistline reminding me with every shakily taken breath of the price riding on it and the fishnet stockings.

I hated the stockings.

“More a whore than an angel”, I always joked.

There were men.

A lot of them. And there were lights. Bedazzling, blinding, beautiful.

As if my kingdom was ready for their queen.

And queen I was.

The colours changed and the fabric over the years. Sometimes i was glittery in plum and gold, sometimes mysterious in aquamarine and white like a water nymph, and sometimes just chocolate, enticing dark chocolate with silken frills that teased the wild fantasies of every man present in the room.

I could see the lust lusting in their eyes, their drooling glance intoxicated by the drugs, the pills and the cheap alcohol.

They didn't touch me.

Just looked. Glimpses of what could have been was allowed in the fortress.

Yet every night, I felt more violated than the last.

Every night on my way back to the tiny loft, I would feel awkward being fully clothed as if my costumes had become part of my own skin and tearing my skin apart every night caused me unintelligible pain.

I walk back home alone.

Its been 10 years.

Never have I loved enough to be granted chivalry and respect for what I do, for who I am.

And i have learnt to dismiss such thoughts of self deprecation as mysteries of the universe that one must not try to solve ever for what is beyond the lace and frills is but a fantasy that shall never come alive.

I pick up my daily at Joe’s and sometimes a cheap bottle of wine on my way back home.

Funny how that pimped loft became home over the years of budding youth to experience.

I water my plants and feed the fish. They keep dying. So I have stopped naming them.

But I do remember the very first one I got. Raphael.

It is as if I need constant companionship from the solitude that attacks me as soon as I am back home drenched with the vile scent of another night spent in the horizon of lusty visions and being jerked off to in the middle of the night beside someone’s wife.

When the laughter and the music start echoing in the silence of the loft, filling up the empty spaces in my mind I quickly go for a shower.

I lather myself up and watch them travel downwards in circles of swirling smooth cream.

No man has ever touched me that way.

I shower twice sometimes. Thrice . … sometimes more times in a night.

Its not the smell, the breathlessness of the tight corset or the loud boisterous life that i want to drown out or wash away.

Its the blackness.

The darkness of my underworld and the colour of my skin.

The pharaohs had bestowed on me the colour of the souls of demons on Earth.

Sunday, 13 December 2015

Fringes of burnt roses grew in one corner of forgotten weeded shrubbery almost like my grade V haircut, accidental fringes.

I did not feel pretty at all for eternity.

But thats not the point. The story is of this forest, whose “weed-en” frames had solemn pictures of these burnt roses, never smiling. The paint of spring had worn off and an infinite potion of summer had been lost somewhere in the dark. It was a small vial of infinite beauty. Tinged by sunlight and cradled in its warmth.

Now, the roses were burnt. scared of autumn.

They wanted to wither away.

Death was poetical but not poetical when endured in excruciating pain and the disappointment of a boon succumbing to an accidental loss of the blessing in the mad frenzy of one intoxicating summer day.

But the forest had them prisoner.

They were thorny frames of timeless beauty.

Solace from the loneliness when the entirety of its being betrayed him in hibernation.

It would stare at them for hours, occasionally persuading a breeze to caress them just to hear their young giggles that grew into laughter and echoed like ripples of sexual tension through his body. The trees would shiver with want and the streams gurgle out moans of pleasure.

The forest would make advances as a doting lover by coaxing the blue birds to fly in from one corner to the other crooning away flirty love songs to the roses. He could never decide which flower pleased him the most.

The daisies with their innocent naive smiles or the water lilies with their pure conscience..

He loved them all.

But he lusted for the royalty. The roses.

The red attracted him in a way that was heart wrenching. He would be left breathless by the red, the slow decent of dew from each petal mirroring his green as if he could touch them through the dew.

He dreamt of lovers camping in his kingdom and remembered the intertwined silhouettes making strange patterns in their shadowy forms against the warm fire.

The fire burnt him a little, left a few scars but so did the roses with their teasing seduction.

He was madly in lust for them roses. But through peaks and occasional stares.

He loved it when it rained.

He imagined each raindrop drenching every part of the roses, the soft petals, the young buds….

He would crave to touch them the way the rain did. He wanted to draw sweetness from their core and caress the red tresses that haunted his nights to a tired morning that brought no peace. The lust simply grew.. and grew to an extent that he wanted to possess them no matter what.

So he framed them.

He knew already that the winters would paint them white.

But he also knew of a beautiful nightingale who would colour them red again, singing all night of love till every drop of blood from its little breast had made beautiful his roses..